There is an interesting time line here - Four Courts? That deals with a messier post WW1 Irish settlement - in that thread the author deals with reaction to heighted conflict/sectarianism in the settler/white dominions. Might be worth a read to see how he thought things could play out in the latter.
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Oh, certainly. The Tuaregs in TTL still have forms of "adoption" and child trading that, if looked at the right way, seem a lot like slavery. They've got away with it thus far, because the slaves/indentured servants are technically free and the "adoptions" sometimes do lead to real familial bonds, but it will definitely be a source of conflict down the line.
He didn't do so in OTL, but TTL was a different political environment. An anti-slavery ideology was sweeping the Sahel, and even though he rejected that ideology, he needed to respond to it in order to maintain legitimacy. Also, he found Abacar persuasive on that subject if not on others.
Yeah, pretty much. Even many of the people who live there call it Buenos Aires, but it's Argentina on official documents.
Nobody else really wanted Mauretania, it isn't adjacent to anyone else's colonial empire, and it isn't in a position to be broken off as a buffer.
If you consider the Kingdom of the Arabs semi-independent, which it pretty much is after this war, then it is technically possible to go from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean without having to pass through European-ruled territory.
The Sahel and the Great Lakes states were, in OTL, the last parts of Africa to be colonized, and it was a near-run thing in many of them; in TTL, these are the areas where independent states continue to exist.
I've seen that one, and it's pretty good. It obviously takes place in a very different political environment from TTL, but if I get any inspiration from it, I'll be sure to credit the author.
Next up: 1898 in Ireland, the Great Lakes, the Ottoman Empire and possibly Southwest Africa; then the "academic" update on European, Ottoman and East Asian politics, which may or may not end up being two updates; then 1899.
Ah, and now we get to the fallout. Which I'm getting the feeling will not be that much better than the war in Hungary and other places...
On the subject of the "I" nations that are going to make trouble for Britain, I'm sure that the obvious answer for the second nation is India, yet something in my gut wants me to guess Indochina or, dare I say it, Ilorin as sources of trouble. Not sure how, but India seems just obvious enough that I'm expecting a fast one.
I'm also glad to see the emergence of the Catholic Liberals that have been alluded to so much. It should be interesting to see their development, especially in states that have anti-clerical streaks in their politics now like France and Italy, not to mention how radically different political situations like Switzerland, Poland, and Austria will have similar results with them. I mean, in Switzerland and Poland, I'd guess that they're just reacting to the hostility to the FAR alliance/the Legion after the fact forcing a development of moderate catholic parties into existence to differentiate themselves, but is Austria feeling that same resentment right now or are they more Liberal reformers first and Catholic moderates second there?
Hell, reading that sergeant talk about it makes me feel like for a while there's going to be a tragic story about the dangers of temptation and sin with the idea of the Legion among some catholics. A diverse multi-national force brought together by mutual bonds of belief and fighting to protect what they believe is right only for their lofty goals to be quickly overtaken by the horrors of war and human sin? I could see some literature reflecting that getting written soon.
Now, I have just a couple of questions regarding the African situation post-war:
First, I'm kind of curious just how people within Sud-Kivu see Kohler. Is he seen as just a run of the mill dictator with military backing who coincidentally kept them out of the war, or is there some genuine respect for him as a leader among the population? I'm rather curious to see both how he's viewed in these times and historically.
Second, what can we expect in the formerly French colonies in Southern Africa with their new rulers? Does Germany go for the Feudal-esque set-up they founded in Namibia ITTL, will they continue French institutions, or will they run them more like their colony in Kamerun(well, except for German Congo which is sure to be at minimum a darker shade of gray to light black)?
Last of all, now that Ethiopia's been recognized as a regional power, and has Romanov vassals in Eritrea, I'm wondering: will they start using that political weight to try and consolidate the vassal tribes around the Nile and Sanaag? Or are they content with the current order of things for now?
On the subject of the "I" nations that are going to make trouble for Britain, I'm sure that the obvious answer for the second nation is India, yet something in my gut wants me to guess Indochina or, dare I say it, Ilorin as sources of trouble. Not sure how, but India seems just obvious enough that I'm expecting a fast one.
I'm also glad to see the emergence of the Catholic Liberals that have been alluded to so much. It should be interesting to see their development, especially in states that have anti-clerical streaks in their politics now like France and Italy, not to mention how radically different political situations like Switzerland, Poland, and Austria will have similar results with them. I mean, in Switzerland and Poland, I'd guess that they're just reacting to the hostility to the FAR alliance/the Legion after the fact forcing a development of moderate catholic parties into existence to differentiate themselves, but is Austria feeling that same resentment right now or are they more Liberal reformers first and Catholic moderates second there?
Hell, reading that sergeant talk about it makes me feel like for a while there's going to be a tragic story about the dangers of temptation and sin with the idea of the Legion among some catholics. A diverse multi-national force brought together by mutual bonds of belief and fighting to protect what they believe is right only for their lofty goals to be quickly overtaken by the horrors of war and human sin? I could see some literature reflecting that getting written soon.
Now, I have just a couple of questions regarding the African situation post-war:
First, I'm kind of curious just how people within Sud-Kivu see Kohler. Is he seen as just a run of the mill dictator with military backing who coincidentally kept them out of the war, or is there some genuine respect for him as a leader among the population? I'm rather curious to see both how he's viewed in these times and historically.
Second, what can we expect in the formerly French colonies in Southern Africa with their new rulers? Does Germany go for the Feudal-esque set-up they founded in Namibia ITTL, will they continue French institutions, or will they run them more like their colony in Kamerun(well, except for German Congo which is sure to be at minimum a darker shade of gray to light black)?
Last of all, now that Ethiopia's been recognized as a regional power, and has Romanov vassals in Eritrea, I'm wondering: will they start using that political weight to try and consolidate the vassal tribes around the Nile and Sanaag? Or are they content with the current order of things for now?
Looking at what's happening now in OTL in Mali there's a 'nationalist' Tuareg rebellion and a 'religious' Islamist rebellion.
Now comparing to TTL we have the Tuareg desert communities under the control of much more 'sophisticated' and wealthy Niger river states.
So we have differences along ethnic, cultural and wealth lines. And the more differences there are within a state the greater the chance of conflict within it.
So we could have the Tuaregs become angry over 'outsiders' trying to impose their views on what is or is not slavery.
Alternatively we could see a fundamentalist Islamist revival among the Tuaregs against the 'decadence' of the Niger river kingdoms.
Or from the other side a leader in Toucouleur or Bornu angry about 'backward savages' defying decrees and maintaining slavery.
Perhaps all it will need is for some rabble rouser looking for an issue or at a higher level some political leader looking to divert attention during difficult times.
Here's hoping that, in the "post-Westphalian" athmosphere of TTL, we'll have less reason for that kind of conflict, as their will be less of a trend of having a unitary nation state imposing its rules and culture on all citizens. Still, as long as there are people, there will be conflict.
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In some places, it will be worse. Fortunately, the great majority of the world is starting to recover.
I never said there would only be one.
More the latter, I think. Austria at this point is trying to figure out what it is - it lost most of its empire, it's now just one of the "Three Lands" (albeit the richest and most populous) and the end of Franz Joseph's reactionary rule has created room for all kinds of experimental politics. There's a sense that ultramontanism has led Austria (and all the FARs) down the garden path, but being Catholic is still a very important part of what it is to be Austrian, so some of the reformers are looking to foreign models of how to integrate Catholicism and liberal modernism.
I'm guessing there will be a "Catholic Liberal International" of some kind, sooner or later.
Certainly. Many Legion veterans have very mixed emotions about their service - it was the first truly international military force, living proof that all men can be brothers, but (in their eyes) it mistook secular politics for the will of God. Stories will indeed be set here, some written by the veterans themselves.
Of course, there are other Legion veterans who aren't in the least conflicted, and they're the ones causing trouble now in France, Belgium and Iberia. Probably elsewhere as well.
Opinions vary, depending on which part of the population you're talking about and what kind of deal they made with him - some consider him just another warlord, albeit more competent than most, while others consider him a political genius who is knitting a fractured and diverse territory into a true state. The fact that he kept South Kivu out of the war and reasonably prosperous, and that he paid host to many refugees, does help.
The Germans will rule the Merina kingdom pretty much the way they do Kazembe and Barotseland, by acting as overlord to the local king. The southern parts of Madagascar will be more directly ruled, at least for a while, but not particularly oppressive, and may eventually be given to the Merina for administrative convenience. As you say, though, German Congo is in for as bad a time as it had under the French.
At the moment they're taking a long-term approach in integrating these territories - giving noble rank to the local chiefs, inviting them to send their sons to Gondar for education, encouraging Christianity among animists while soft-pedaling it among Muslims, etc. A new emperor may mean new policies, though, and remember that one of Anastasia's future titles means Queen of Kush.
Any of these could happen - right now, the Tuaregs are looking to the Sahel empires for protection and conflict mediation, but as those issues recede, others will come to the fore. As Wannis says, wherever there are human beings, there will be conflict, and given the ideologies that exist in the region, quasi-slavery would certainly be a fault line.
Do you mean in the sense of writing comedies of manners/thrillers, or in the sense of writing politically-charged novels about foreign invasions of Britain? There are certainly people doing the former, and given prewar tensions with France, there are probably equivalents to the latter as well, although like many political novels, they may not be very good.
Matabeleland is a British protectorate; it was defeated in colonial warfare but not turned into a settler colony. Cecil Rhodes never got to Africa in TTL. It is the Ndebele kingdom as a British princely state.
Pretty much the latter applying to the period during the run up to the war, I just couldn't find an invasion literature author from the 1880s OTL. Thanks by the way.
Sorry if this has been asked already, but what has become of French India? Is it now part of British India?
No, thank you. I hadn't realized until today that "invasion literature" was an actual genre. Nor had I realized that even when writing a novel about life in occupied Britain, Saki would still produce a comedy of manners, complete with society scenes, very British classism and ruralism, a touch of genteel anti-semitism and more than a touch of upper-class wit.
Another ironic thing is that many of the invasion novels, including Saki's, assumed that Britain's fall would result from a short sharp war (because the lower classes are so unmilitary, don't you know). In his book, evidence of occupation is all around - bilingual signs, German officers and titled heads everywhere, etc. - but there is no evidence of battle, and the war dead are only mentioned a couple of times in passing. The victorious Britain of OTL and TTL suffered far greater loss than the defeated Britain of When William Came.
I assume someone will make that point about TTL's invasion novels, although the bete noire of those works would be France rather than Britain.
Yes it is. It may have lasted a week once the war started, but it also might not have.
Talking about novels.
We have a science fiction author as French prime minister but what's his English equivalent been doing?
The war years are the exact point where H G Wells is writing his great stories.
Has he done so in TTL.
He is I notice exactly the right age to be conscripted.
And surely the Great War produced the equivalent of OTL's war poetry and novels?
Speaking of which OTL produced poetry from the victorious side but novels from the losing side (roughly speaking of course).
Perhaps in TTL the great novel of the Great War will be written by Marcel Proust or Andre Gide.
We have a science fiction author as French prime minister but what's his English equivalent been doing?
The war years are the exact point where H G Wells is writing his great stories.
Has he done so in TTL.
He is I notice exactly the right age to be conscripted.
And surely the Great War produced the equivalent of OTL's war poetry and novels?
Speaking of which OTL produced poetry from the victorious side but novels from the losing side (roughly speaking of course).
Perhaps in TTL the great novel of the Great War will be written by Marcel Proust or Andre Gide.
They're still around. We saw them during the war when Mutapa was still fighting Portugal, before it made a deal under which it recognized Portuguese sovereignty and not much else. The Shona consider them a clan, and they're a fairly influential one, with several of their leaders holding military or civil offices and a few of them marrying into prominent families. There's a lot of traffic back and forth between them, the South African Republic, and to a lesser extent the Orange Free State.
I'm not sure if there would be analogues to Wells, Proust and Gide in TTL - they were born long enough after the POD, and in countries that were affected early enough, that their parents would likely have made different life choices. Of course there will be other writers of similar stature.
The Great War has indeed produced poetry and novels - like our own First World War, it is humanity's first experience with industrial warfare on this scale, and marks a dramatic shift in the view of war and its treatment in popular culture. We've actually seen an excerpt of a war novel and a war poem, although they aren't precisely British. There will be others.
I'd never realized that most of OTL's WW1 novels were German and most of the poetry was British or French, but that does seem to be the case - all the novels I can think of offhand, other than Hemingway's, were written by the losers and the famous poetry was written by the victors. I wonder why that was the case, or if it even is the case (maybe German or Austrian war poets are better known in the German-speaking countries), and I'm not sure it will be so in TTL.
For what it's worth, in Italy (a "winner" in OTL's WWI, so to speak) poetry dominated the war-related literary discourse as well, most notably with Ungaretti. On the other hand, I can think of at least one outstanding French WWI-related novel, Le diable au corps by Raymond Radiguet. (And there is Louis-Ferdinand Céline as well, although I confess I have read too little of him to have any opinion worth considering).
1898, Part 1.5
Andorra la Vella, November 1898
Jordi Casal woke at three in the morning to a loud banging on his door. Beside him, his wife stirred and looked at him with anxious eyes, and the baby started crying.
“Go away!” he shouted. The knocking came again, this time louder.
He cursed and got out of bed; it was dark and deathly cold. He took up a cane that was lying on a table and stumbled to the door. “Who the hell is out there?” he demanded. “You’d better have a damned good reason to come here at this time of night…”
“Open up, Jordi.”
“Francesc?” The shock of recognition was as keen as the knocks had been; his neighbor was a steady man who rose early to work, and would never disturb the peace at this time of night. “What are you doing here?”
“Open up and let me in. They’ve called the sometent.”
“What?” For a moment, what Francesc had said failed to register. The sometent – the general levy of all able-bodied men to fight – hadn’t been called in six hundred years. If they were calling it now…
He opened the door. His neighbor was there with three others, all armed, and he let them in.
“Get dressed and get your gun,” Francesc said. “Albert too.” But Jordi’s oldest son, just turned nineteen, was already up and clothed.
“The sometent?” Jordi asked, still not believing it. “What happened?”
“The bishop is coming with five hundred Legionnaires to open the road.”
“The bishop…” Jordi repeated, and suddenly he understood. Smugglers and volunteers had been coming through the mountains since the French civil war began: Papal Legion veterans to fight for the French State, Catalan socialists and anarchists – the ones who brawled with the Legionnaires in Barcelona – to fight for the Empire. And with one of its co-princes the Emperor of France and the other, the Bishop of Seu de Urgell, a keen supporter of the rebels, Andorra was caught in the middle.
The General Council’s answer had been to close the passes to both sides. Jordi had been there when the resolution was debated, and he’d thought it was a wise one. But maybe it hadn’t been so wise. The Bishop was as ultramontane as they came – the Pope had appointed him personally in the last year of the war, and like all the prelates the Pope was making in Spain, he was hard to the right – and he’d evidently decided to force the issue. And the council was fighting him, which meant that Andorra was rebelling against one of its co-princes in the name of the other.
Jordi kissed his wife on the forehead and threw on his clothes and boots; Albert already had his rifle. The two men fell in behind Francesc as he headed for the next house.
“The bishop has called the sometent in Sant Julià de Lòria,” Francesc said, naming the parish closest to the Spanish border, “and both he and the council have called it in Escaldes-Engordany. There have been fights in Escaldes town, even some shooting.”
“A civil war?” Andorra at war was impossible to begin with, but a civil war…
“We hope not. But if they answer the Bishop in Sant Julià, we may have to shoot them along with his Legionnaires.”
“Surely the Spaniards will stop him?”
“He’s not acting in the name of Spain, he’s acting as a prince of Andorra. And the Spaniards only have a couple of guards at the border.” Jordi nodded; Spain didn’t want to get involved in the French war, and it would no doubt send a battalion to the border once it heard, but it couldn’t do anything to stop the bishop now.
It was another hour, and the small force had grown to forty, by the time they arrived in Andorra la Vella’s central square. Other companies were drifting in, and the officers – the twelve men of the standing army – were taking charge of them. Jordi found himself being shouted into line at one end of the square as Francesc and the other sergeants took a hasty count.
Looks like about three hundred from Andorra la Vella. We might get another twelve hundred from the east and north in the next couple of hours, depending on how many get here from Escaldes. Some of the men from the northern valleys were here already, brought in by two of the country’s few motor wagons; the walkers and riders were coming in a few at a time. If as many came as Jordi expected, they would outnumber the bishop’s force by more than two to one, but many of his men would be veterans.
He did his best to keep warm as dawn broke over the mountains, and shared nervous rumors with his neighbors: the Bishop had been defeated in Escaldes; he had won, and the townsmen were marching on the capital; Sant Julià had refused to answer his summons; no, its men were with the Bishop two hundred strong. An hour later, when he’d long since given up trying to sort fact from fiction, the order came to march.
The road from the capital led down through the valley past farmhouses and pastures. It seemed that someone was looking out every window at the spectacle: an Andorran army marching, for the first time in centuries. They passed the village of Santa Coloma, and that was where Jordi heard the shooting.
“Sant Julià,” Albert whispered. Evidently the Bishop wasn’t having as easy a passage as he’d hoped for, and the townsmen there were fighting him rather than obeying his sometent. It wouldn’t be a civil war, or at least not much of one, and Jordi felt a weight lift from his soul. But the shooting was getting closer – the Legionnaires were forcing their way through Sant Julià, or maybe bypassing it – and he knew that battle was close at hand.
The officers called a halt by a stone wall at a narrow point during the valley, and there was confused shouting as they set the men to gather more stones for barricades. Jordi heaved a stone into place and saw that the road had been blocked; others were filling in gaps in the low wall and building it up in the places where it had crumbled.
“Look!” Albert called suddenly. Jordi followed his son’s eyes down the road and saw them: five hundred Legionnaires and two or three hundred more townsmen from his see and from the valleys, led by the Bishop himself.
“Turpin of Rheims,” muttered Francesc. The legend of Charlemagne was strong in these mountains – the stories here said that the Frankish king himself had been Andorra’s founder – and a bishop going to battle carried powerful symbolism. Jordi remembered that the Bishop had been in the Legion himself before taking vows during the war, and in the middle of his troops, he looked more like a soldier than a churchman.
“Turpin was French,” Jordi answered, crouching behind the wall.
“He fought the Moors, and I hear they’re on the French side these days. A smuggler told me every fourth man in the French army’s black.”
“The Bishop has some too,” said Albert, and there were indeed a few Africans in the Legionnaires’ ranks. Maybe they were from Spanish Guinea, or maybe they’d got to Spain some other way after the big war ended, but the world was no longer moros y cristianos; every side had Moors of its own, and some of them were as Christian as any priest.
A bullet crackled overhead, and then another. Jordi aimed carefully and fired his own rifle at the advancing Legionnaires. Some of the men near him were doing the same thing, but others seemed to have frozen, and one or two were running.
He fired again, and then the Legionnaires charged, closing the distance with appalling speed. Some of them were falling, but the others kept coming, and he wondered how they could do that. He wanted to run himself, but something rooted him to the ground, and he fired once more.
There was an unearthly scream, and someone was coming over the wall at him with a bayonet. He had none; he parried with his rifle barrel and managed to knock the point aside, but he didn’t know what he was doing and he was sure he would be killed. But then he heard a report and his attacker fell; Albert was standing there open-mouthed, clutching his weapon for dear life.
And then, suddenly, there was no one at the wall. It hadn’t seemed so at the time, but the Andorrans’ fire had broken up the Legionnaires’ formation, and they’d reached the wall in scattered groups rather than as a unit. They’d come a few at a time, and the Andorrans had pushed them back a few at a time, and the survivors of the charge were retreating down the valley.
“They’ll be more careful next time,” Francesc said, and watched them regroup. But there was no next time. There was no way to get around the Andorrans’ flank, and the Bishop had no artillery; he sent a few probing attacks forward, but realized that the wall was too strongly held for him to pass. There was a whispered conference just out of rifle range, and then the Legionnaires turned back from whence they had come.
“We’ll advance to Sant Julià?” Jordi asked.
“Not until they’re gone. If we break cover now, they could still have us.”
Jordi nodded and suddenly realized how cold it was and how tired he had become. He hoped there wouldn’t be another battle, but even here in the mountains, he knew how much hope was worth.
Andorra la Vella, November 1898
Jordi Casal woke at three in the morning to a loud banging on his door. Beside him, his wife stirred and looked at him with anxious eyes, and the baby started crying.
“Go away!” he shouted. The knocking came again, this time louder.
He cursed and got out of bed; it was dark and deathly cold. He took up a cane that was lying on a table and stumbled to the door. “Who the hell is out there?” he demanded. “You’d better have a damned good reason to come here at this time of night…”
“Open up, Jordi.”
“Francesc?” The shock of recognition was as keen as the knocks had been; his neighbor was a steady man who rose early to work, and would never disturb the peace at this time of night. “What are you doing here?”
“Open up and let me in. They’ve called the sometent.”
“What?” For a moment, what Francesc had said failed to register. The sometent – the general levy of all able-bodied men to fight – hadn’t been called in six hundred years. If they were calling it now…
He opened the door. His neighbor was there with three others, all armed, and he let them in.
“Get dressed and get your gun,” Francesc said. “Albert too.” But Jordi’s oldest son, just turned nineteen, was already up and clothed.
“The sometent?” Jordi asked, still not believing it. “What happened?”
“The bishop is coming with five hundred Legionnaires to open the road.”
“The bishop…” Jordi repeated, and suddenly he understood. Smugglers and volunteers had been coming through the mountains since the French civil war began: Papal Legion veterans to fight for the French State, Catalan socialists and anarchists – the ones who brawled with the Legionnaires in Barcelona – to fight for the Empire. And with one of its co-princes the Emperor of France and the other, the Bishop of Seu de Urgell, a keen supporter of the rebels, Andorra was caught in the middle.
The General Council’s answer had been to close the passes to both sides. Jordi had been there when the resolution was debated, and he’d thought it was a wise one. But maybe it hadn’t been so wise. The Bishop was as ultramontane as they came – the Pope had appointed him personally in the last year of the war, and like all the prelates the Pope was making in Spain, he was hard to the right – and he’d evidently decided to force the issue. And the council was fighting him, which meant that Andorra was rebelling against one of its co-princes in the name of the other.
Jordi kissed his wife on the forehead and threw on his clothes and boots; Albert already had his rifle. The two men fell in behind Francesc as he headed for the next house.
“The bishop has called the sometent in Sant Julià de Lòria,” Francesc said, naming the parish closest to the Spanish border, “and both he and the council have called it in Escaldes-Engordany. There have been fights in Escaldes town, even some shooting.”
“A civil war?” Andorra at war was impossible to begin with, but a civil war…
“We hope not. But if they answer the Bishop in Sant Julià, we may have to shoot them along with his Legionnaires.”
“Surely the Spaniards will stop him?”
“He’s not acting in the name of Spain, he’s acting as a prince of Andorra. And the Spaniards only have a couple of guards at the border.” Jordi nodded; Spain didn’t want to get involved in the French war, and it would no doubt send a battalion to the border once it heard, but it couldn’t do anything to stop the bishop now.
It was another hour, and the small force had grown to forty, by the time they arrived in Andorra la Vella’s central square. Other companies were drifting in, and the officers – the twelve men of the standing army – were taking charge of them. Jordi found himself being shouted into line at one end of the square as Francesc and the other sergeants took a hasty count.
Looks like about three hundred from Andorra la Vella. We might get another twelve hundred from the east and north in the next couple of hours, depending on how many get here from Escaldes. Some of the men from the northern valleys were here already, brought in by two of the country’s few motor wagons; the walkers and riders were coming in a few at a time. If as many came as Jordi expected, they would outnumber the bishop’s force by more than two to one, but many of his men would be veterans.
He did his best to keep warm as dawn broke over the mountains, and shared nervous rumors with his neighbors: the Bishop had been defeated in Escaldes; he had won, and the townsmen were marching on the capital; Sant Julià had refused to answer his summons; no, its men were with the Bishop two hundred strong. An hour later, when he’d long since given up trying to sort fact from fiction, the order came to march.
The road from the capital led down through the valley past farmhouses and pastures. It seemed that someone was looking out every window at the spectacle: an Andorran army marching, for the first time in centuries. They passed the village of Santa Coloma, and that was where Jordi heard the shooting.
“Sant Julià,” Albert whispered. Evidently the Bishop wasn’t having as easy a passage as he’d hoped for, and the townsmen there were fighting him rather than obeying his sometent. It wouldn’t be a civil war, or at least not much of one, and Jordi felt a weight lift from his soul. But the shooting was getting closer – the Legionnaires were forcing their way through Sant Julià, or maybe bypassing it – and he knew that battle was close at hand.
The officers called a halt by a stone wall at a narrow point during the valley, and there was confused shouting as they set the men to gather more stones for barricades. Jordi heaved a stone into place and saw that the road had been blocked; others were filling in gaps in the low wall and building it up in the places where it had crumbled.
“Look!” Albert called suddenly. Jordi followed his son’s eyes down the road and saw them: five hundred Legionnaires and two or three hundred more townsmen from his see and from the valleys, led by the Bishop himself.
“Turpin of Rheims,” muttered Francesc. The legend of Charlemagne was strong in these mountains – the stories here said that the Frankish king himself had been Andorra’s founder – and a bishop going to battle carried powerful symbolism. Jordi remembered that the Bishop had been in the Legion himself before taking vows during the war, and in the middle of his troops, he looked more like a soldier than a churchman.
“Turpin was French,” Jordi answered, crouching behind the wall.
“He fought the Moors, and I hear they’re on the French side these days. A smuggler told me every fourth man in the French army’s black.”
“The Bishop has some too,” said Albert, and there were indeed a few Africans in the Legionnaires’ ranks. Maybe they were from Spanish Guinea, or maybe they’d got to Spain some other way after the big war ended, but the world was no longer moros y cristianos; every side had Moors of its own, and some of them were as Christian as any priest.
A bullet crackled overhead, and then another. Jordi aimed carefully and fired his own rifle at the advancing Legionnaires. Some of the men near him were doing the same thing, but others seemed to have frozen, and one or two were running.
He fired again, and then the Legionnaires charged, closing the distance with appalling speed. Some of them were falling, but the others kept coming, and he wondered how they could do that. He wanted to run himself, but something rooted him to the ground, and he fired once more.
There was an unearthly scream, and someone was coming over the wall at him with a bayonet. He had none; he parried with his rifle barrel and managed to knock the point aside, but he didn’t know what he was doing and he was sure he would be killed. But then he heard a report and his attacker fell; Albert was standing there open-mouthed, clutching his weapon for dear life.
And then, suddenly, there was no one at the wall. It hadn’t seemed so at the time, but the Andorrans’ fire had broken up the Legionnaires’ formation, and they’d reached the wall in scattered groups rather than as a unit. They’d come a few at a time, and the Andorrans had pushed them back a few at a time, and the survivors of the charge were retreating down the valley.
“They’ll be more careful next time,” Francesc said, and watched them regroup. But there was no next time. There was no way to get around the Andorrans’ flank, and the Bishop had no artillery; he sent a few probing attacks forward, but realized that the wall was too strongly held for him to pass. There was a whispered conference just out of rifle range, and then the Legionnaires turned back from whence they had come.
“We’ll advance to Sant Julià?” Jordi asked.
“Not until they’re gone. If we break cover now, they could still have us.”
Jordi nodded and suddenly realized how cold it was and how tired he had become. He hoped there wouldn’t be another battle, but even here in the mountains, he knew how much hope was worth.
Dragos Cel Mare
Banned
Again, masterful. Andorra la Vella at war; guess it's not just Congo and the Amazon that are worse off than OTL.
Full points for giving us a TL where there will eventually be a war movie set in Andorra.
Neither did I until I wrote the comment - your timeline really sparks thoughts in all directions
'Farewell To Arms' is the only exception which came to my mind as well, but even in that case its setting - Caparetto and its aftermath - is a military defeat.
Likewise 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' is also from the losing side.
As was Zola's 'Debacle' the great war novel of the 1890s in OTL.
While Tolstoy's war writing in 'Sevastopol Sketches', 'Hadji Murat' and 'War and Peace' again focuses on defeats and failures.
Now there are certainly great novels from the winning side after WWII - 'The Naked and the Dead', 'Catch 22' and 'Slaughterhouse 5' but they're definately not truimphalist.
The irony.
Very well written Jonathan.
I assume that some of the Papal Legion were from Ireland.
If they cause trouble when they return home the British government might see 'outside influences' being behind any Irish Republican trouble.